11 ms·

Why do we need to protect our borders? Why not just let people live wherever they can afford?

dominotw 7y ago
seems a bit offtopic flamewar I read a research finding somewhere that there are about 500million ppl who would move to US in very near future if they are allowed to move to USA.
paggle 7y ago
Name one country with better-than-average standard of living that has opened its borders and thrived. There will always be a wall around something nice — either around your house, or your neighborhood, or your country.
- drewrv 7y ago
  The United States itself had "open borders" for a long period of time. There was mass immigration from Ireland, Italy, and many other places and it worked out quite well for us. Even today, we have "open borders" within the US. People are free to move from from poor (or poorly run) communities to places with more opportunities and it's a win-win. Similarly Europe has 26 countries in the Shengen area. Some of the countries have a "better-than-average standard of living" and they're doing just fine.
  - ThePawnBreak 7y ago
    > The United States itself had "open borders" for a long period of time. There was mass immigration from Ireland, Italy, and many other places and it worked out quite well for us. There was no welfare state back then, and the economic situation was vastly different. Also saying it went "quite well" looks over all of the ethnic tension that took decades to fix. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Americans#Discrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Americans#Discrimination > Similarly Europe has 26 countries in the Shengen area. Some of the countries have a "better-than-average standard of living" and they're doing just fine. Heard about Brexit? The Romanians are coming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb1AkaKJL08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb1AkaKJL08
    - stordoff 7y ago
      > Heard about Brexit? The UK was never in the Schengen Area to begin with.
      - ThePawnBreak 7y ago
        Do you live in Europe? Schengen is only about passport control at the border, but any EU citizen had the right to work in the UK, no visa required. Eastern European workers lowering wages and quality of work for most British tradesmen and low skilled workers is probably the main reason for Brexit.
  - paggle 7y ago
    At a time when there was infinite demand for unskilled labor and when relative standard of living was much lower.
- tensor 7y ago
  Canada takes in a large number of immigrants and thrives for it. Based https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migra..., we take in double what the US does.
  - paggle 7y ago
    LOL! Canada does not have even close to open borders. They have refugees and they have merit immigration which has been decried as racist in the US. Merit immigration needs a better ambassador than Trump. Perhaps Bernie Sanders.
  - barry-cotter 7y ago
    This is completely unresponsive to the comment you’re replying to. Canada is extremely far from having open borders, controls temporary and permanent immigration vigorously and doesn’t border any poor countries anywhere with substance populations.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
homonculus1 7y ago
Social safety nets, open borders, future ongoing existence of an orderly nation. Pick two.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  This. Things are not good everywhere in the world right now, we have to make trade offs. Humanity will progress and eventually things will be much much fairer, where we could have all of these things simultaneously, but we've got a long way to go as a species.
  - homonculus1 7y ago
    To add further, it would be horrible if inequality were perpetuated forever. But we have made a lot of progress by instituting liberal order and Western values in our own demarcated nations. This order is uplifting the world and other nations are able to copy it at their own pace. To eliminate the demarcations threatens a race to the bottom wherein the system has to accept people who do not know how to participate in our way of life, in greater numbers than it can accept.
- LegitShady 7y ago
  If you think open borders and ongoing orderly nationare an option you're wrong. Whoever walks into your nation will shape it. Your children's voices don't matter. There are far more children outside the country than in it and democracy can't work with open borders.
  - homonculus1 7y ago
    I think for most any given policy you could find some constellation of trade-offs and counterbalances that would make it work. Maybe for a certain value of "work" because in many cases those trade-offs would have to violate values or principles that we consider more important. I think that a nation could in theory have open borders and prosper, but the trade-offs would have to be such that only like-minded people who can fit in and succeed would have an incentive to immigrate. This means that their children's voices would be saying the same thing as your children's, but there would be e.g. no help for the poor since that would attract enough free riders to kill the goose. So I agree with you that borders are preferable, but I don't think getting rid of them is totally impossible, but I do think that doing so would be even worse for the compassion that makes people want to in the first place.
javagram 7y ago
People illegally present in the US cannot work legally. That means they work under the table and are subject to all sorts of abuse, and their presence promotes gray market/black market economies. While I think it is unfair to deport people who have been here for decades and giving them amnesty (again, like we did in the 1980s) is a reasonable solution especially for those who were kids when they came here, I don’t have any problem with stopping new people from crossing illegally. If we want to increase immigration we should do it the right way by raising legal quotas and allowing people to come via the visa process.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  So let people have work permits as long as they don't commit serious crimes and the illegal work problem goes away. There is no necessity for the control freakery that has driven much immigration policy in recent years.
  - CapricornNoble 7y ago
    Two of the big problems right now are: 1. People entering the country outside of defined points of entry. We can't issue a work permit to people we don't know are here. Anduril's products are meant to address these gaps in the border, which should lead to all traffic being forced to official points of entry. 2. Illegals who commit crimes get released.[1] Sometimes released domestically, sometimes deported. Some of the deported ones return. Which brings us back to #1. [1]https://www.foxnews.com/us/kate-steinle-jose-inez-garcia-zarate-california-appeals-court https://www.foxnews.com/us/kate-steinle-jose-inez-garcia-zar...
    - anigbrowl 7y ago
      1. people don't have an incentive to avoid ports of entry if we don't make the admissions process so draconian. 2. 'illegal' isn't a noun. These are people we're talking about. This is not a place for you to peddle your propaganda.
      - 7y ago
bobcostas55 7y ago
Because they impose externalities on the people around them.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  And yet immigrants have lower levels of criminality than native-born Americans, so you're actually better off with more of them.

seems a bit offtopic flamewar I read a research finding somewhere that there are about 500million ppl who would move to US in very near future if they are allowed to move to USA.

paggle 7y ago

Name one country with better-than-average standard of living that has opened its borders and thrived. There will always be a wall around something nice — either around your house, or your neighborhood, or your country.

drewrv 7y ago
The United States itself had "open borders" for a long period of time. There was mass immigration from Ireland, Italy, and many other places and it worked out quite well for us. Even today, we have "open borders" within the US. People are free to move from from poor (or poorly run) communities to places with more opportunities and it's a win-win. Similarly Europe has 26 countries in the Shengen area. Some of the countries have a "better-than-average standard of living" and they're doing just fine.
- ThePawnBreak 7y ago
  > The United States itself had "open borders" for a long period of time. There was mass immigration from Ireland, Italy, and many other places and it worked out quite well for us. There was no welfare state back then, and the economic situation was vastly different. Also saying it went "quite well" looks over all of the ethnic tension that took decades to fix. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Americans#Discrimination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Americans#Discrimination > Similarly Europe has 26 countries in the Shengen area. Some of the countries have a "better-than-average standard of living" and they're doing just fine. Heard about Brexit? The Romanians are coming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb1AkaKJL08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yb1AkaKJL08
  - stordoff 7y ago
    > Heard about Brexit? The UK was never in the Schengen Area to begin with.
    - ThePawnBreak 7y ago
      Do you live in Europe? Schengen is only about passport control at the border, but any EU citizen had the right to work in the UK, no visa required. Eastern European workers lowering wages and quality of work for most British tradesmen and low skilled workers is probably the main reason for Brexit.
- paggle 7y ago
  At a time when there was infinite demand for unskilled labor and when relative standard of living was much lower.
tensor 7y ago
Canada takes in a large number of immigrants and thrives for it. Based https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migration_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_net_migra..., we take in double what the US does.
- paggle 7y ago
  LOL! Canada does not have even close to open borders. They have refugees and they have merit immigration which has been decried as racist in the US. Merit immigration needs a better ambassador than Trump. Perhaps Bernie Sanders.
- barry-cotter 7y ago
  This is completely unresponsive to the comment you’re replying to. Canada is extremely far from having open borders, controls temporary and permanent immigration vigorously and doesn’t border any poor countries anywhere with substance populations.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

homonculus1 7y ago

Social safety nets, open borders, future ongoing existence of an orderly nation. Pick two.

cameronbrown 7y ago
This. Things are not good everywhere in the world right now, we have to make trade offs. Humanity will progress and eventually things will be much much fairer, where we could have all of these things simultaneously, but we've got a long way to go as a species.
- homonculus1 7y ago
  To add further, it would be horrible if inequality were perpetuated forever. But we have made a lot of progress by instituting liberal order and Western values in our own demarcated nations. This order is uplifting the world and other nations are able to copy it at their own pace. To eliminate the demarcations threatens a race to the bottom wherein the system has to accept people who do not know how to participate in our way of life, in greater numbers than it can accept.
LegitShady 7y ago
If you think open borders and ongoing orderly nationare an option you're wrong. Whoever walks into your nation will shape it. Your children's voices don't matter. There are far more children outside the country than in it and democracy can't work with open borders.
- homonculus1 7y ago
  I think for most any given policy you could find some constellation of trade-offs and counterbalances that would make it work. Maybe for a certain value of "work" because in many cases those trade-offs would have to violate values or principles that we consider more important. I think that a nation could in theory have open borders and prosper, but the trade-offs would have to be such that only like-minded people who can fit in and succeed would have an incentive to immigrate. This means that their children's voices would be saying the same thing as your children's, but there would be e.g. no help for the poor since that would attract enough free riders to kill the goose. So I agree with you that borders are preferable, but I don't think getting rid of them is totally impossible, but I do think that doing so would be even worse for the compassion that makes people want to in the first place.

javagram 7y ago

People illegally present in the US cannot work legally. That means they work under the table and are subject to all sorts of abuse, and their presence promotes gray market/black market economies. While I think it is unfair to deport people who have been here for decades and giving them amnesty (again, like we did in the 1980s) is a reasonable solution especially for those who were kids when they came here, I don’t have any problem with stopping new people from crossing illegally. If we want to increase immigration we should do it the right way by raising legal quotas and allowing people to come via the visa process.

anigbrowl 7y ago
So let people have work permits as long as they don't commit serious crimes and the illegal work problem goes away. There is no necessity for the control freakery that has driven much immigration policy in recent years.
- CapricornNoble 7y ago
  Two of the big problems right now are: 1. People entering the country outside of defined points of entry. We can't issue a work permit to people we don't know are here. Anduril's products are meant to address these gaps in the border, which should lead to all traffic being forced to official points of entry. 2. Illegals who commit crimes get released.[1] Sometimes released domestically, sometimes deported. Some of the deported ones return. Which brings us back to #1. [1]https://www.foxnews.com/us/kate-steinle-jose-inez-garcia-zarate-california-appeals-court https://www.foxnews.com/us/kate-steinle-jose-inez-garcia-zar...
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    1. people don't have an incentive to avoid ports of entry if we don't make the admissions process so draconian. 2. 'illegal' isn't a noun. These are people we're talking about. This is not a place for you to peddle your propaganda.
    - 7y ago

bobcostas55 7y ago

Because they impose externalities on the people around them.

anigbrowl 7y ago
And yet immigrants have lower levels of criminality than native-born Americans, so you're actually better off with more of them.